- TX: Judge removed from track meet stabbing case as defendant Karmelo Anthony seeks a new trial
Source: Associated Press
“The judge in the case of a Texas teenager convicted of fatally stabbing a 17-year-old athlete at a high school track meet was ordered removed Wednesday, as the defendant seeks a new trial in a case that drew national attention. Karmelo Anthony, now 19, was convicted of murder and sentenced to 35 years in prison after a suburban Dallas jury in June rejected his claims of self-defense during a confrontation with Austin Metcalf in the stadium bleachers last year. … A new judge will be assigned for Thursday’s hearing on Anthony’s request for a retrial. Anthony’s legal team argued Wednesday that a retrial is needed in part because [District Judge John] Roach enforced overly strict courtroom rules and gave an interview after the trial was over.” (08/19/26)
- Nord Stream: Second suspect arrested over pipeline blasts
Source: Deutsche Welle [German state media]
“A second suspect has been arrested in relation to the Nord Stream gas pipeline explosions in 2022, German prosecutors said on Wednesday. Croatian police, acting on a European arrest warrant, detained a Ukrainian national in Pula. ‘The Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office had Ukrainian Vladimir Z. arrested in Pula (Croatia) by local police forces,’ prosecutors said. They said that the man, a trained scuba diver, ‘is strongly suspected of jointly causing explosions.’ The prosecutors said they were pursuing the man’s extradition from Croatia. He is reported to have previously been detained in Poland in September 2025 but was released after an extradition request from Germany was turned down. Another suspect, also a Ukrainian national, was arrested in Italy last year.” (08/19/26)
https://www.dw.com/en/nord-stream-second-suspect-arrested-croatia/a-78427413
- Inflation Is the State’s Contraceptive
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Angelo Monaco“From a pure free-market, Austrian, and public choice perspective, the long-term demographic decline of the native-born population is not an accidental social phenomenon. It is the predictable consequence of government growth, fiscal dominance, and irresponsible monetary expansion. When state spending exceeds tax revenues, the resulting deficits, inflation, and market distortions create structural disincentives that make multi-decade capital commitments—such as having and raising children—increasingly irrational for economic actors. From a strict market perspective, the declining birth rate of the domestic population is an unintended structural feedback loop of state expansion.” (08/19/26)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/inflation-is-the-states-contraceptive
- Can Antitrust Regulators Learn to Trust Consumers?
Source: The Daily Economy
by Tirzah Duren“Antitrust enforcement should preserve competition and respect consumer choice, not restrict both in pursuit of vague political goals.” (08/19/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/can-antitrust-regulators-learn-to-trust-consumers/
- AI data center opponents get water use argument all wrong
Source: USA Today
by Dace Potas“Data centers, the gigantic buildings that house the computing power behind the artificial intelligence boom, are wildly unpopular. A recent Gallup poll found that 7 in 10 Americans oppose one being built in their area. Most of those objections don’t hold up. In town after town, data centers have delivered real benefits to the communities willing to host them. Local officials should be welcoming these projects, not passing laws to keep them out.” (08/19/26)
- Actions more important than words
Source: Eastern New Mexico News
by Kent McManigal“To discover who someone is, you have to pay attention to what they do, not what they say. Words are cheap, and lies come easy. This goes triple for government. A government that talks about your safety but does things that will make you less safe is not on your side.” (08/19/26)
- Trump’s Dictator Envy Is Once Again on Display in Tiff with South Korea
Source: Reason
by JD Tuccille“President Donald Trump’s decision to ‘substantially reduce’ joint military exercises between the armed forces of the United States and those of South Korea captures the distilled essence of the nation’s current chief executive in its combination of petulance and affection for autocrats. On the one hand, he wants to punish our allies in the Republic of Korea for withholding support for the U.S. war with Iran. Especially, though, he wants to avoid offending the communist dictator of North Korea by training alongside our democratic and relatively free allies on the Korean peninsula. … Unfortunately, Trump has a history of turning against our friends and maintaining a soft spot for those hostile to American values.” (08/19/26)
- Prediction markets at odds with US mood on gambling
Source: Christian Science Monitor
by staff“Public acceptance of gambling has fallen among Americans, a shift best illustrated by the number of recent victories by states to curb the burgeoning industry of prediction markets, the practice of wagering on the outcomes of future events. Last week, for example, a judge in Washington state cited the online platform Kalshi for deceptive marketing of ‘illegal gambling activities’. The company is now blocked from offering ‘event contracts’ to consumers who wager on predictions in ‘sports, elections, politics, entertainment, culture, tech and science’. The ruling was pretty easy, as the state defines gambling as ‘staking or risking something of value upon the outcome of a contest of chance or a future contingent event not under the person’s control or influence’. It follows other successful efforts in several states against operators of prediction markets.” (08/18/26)
- What Will Come of Trump’s Radical Remaking of the Presidency?
Source: The UnPopulist
by Francis Fukuyama“As we move toward the end of the Trump era, we need to reckon with the changes his administration has wrought in the American system of government. The most significant is the enormous concentration of power, not just in the executive branch as a whole, but in the office of the president. Any successor administration, Republican or Democratic, will inherit these powers, and will have to decide how it wants to define the limits of executive authority in the future.” (08/19/26)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/what-will-come-of-trumps-radical
- Americans Don’t Deserve Liberty or Safety
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger“Benjamin Franklin pointed out a truth that should be highly discomforting to 21st-century Americans: ‘Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.’ Why discomforting? Because that’s exactly what both 20th-century and 21st-century Americans have done.” (08/19/26)
https://www.fff.org/2026/08/19/americans-dont-deserve-liberty-or-safety/
- Today In Dystopia: “We Have Cameras Everywhere In That Town”
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone“Today in dystopia, police have been wrongfully arresting people based on faulty information from AI-assisted Flock surveillance footage instead of actually investigating the evidence of the crime. In an article titled ‘She Spent 7 Months in Legal Hell After Cops Used Flock Surveillance To Identify the Wrong Car’, Reason Magazine documents multiple instances of innocent people having their lives upended in legal battles because police slammed them with charges based on incorrect Flock camera data which could have easily been ruled out by some basic verification. … Reason shared a police body cam video of a cop confidently handing a court summons to a woman for package theft, telling her and her husband that it was ‘100 percent certain’ she was guilty because Flock surveillance had her on camera committing the crime.” (08/19/26)
- Soho Forum Debate: Does Gun Control Make Us Safer?
Source: Reason
“Statistician Aaron Brown and gun policy scholar Robert Spitzer debate the resolution, ‘Until there is convincing evidence that government-imposed gun control brings a net reduction in harm, all legal restrictions on adult possession of guns should be abolished.'” (08/19/26)
https://reason.com/podcast/2026/08/19/does-gun-control-make-us-safer/
- Ron Paul Liberty Report, 08/19/26
Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
“Good Night, Young American.” (08/19/26)